A report from market research firm Interactive Data Corp. (IDC) last month gave some surprising news -- "Windows Phone posted the largest year-over-year gain among the leading operating systems, more than doubling its size from a year ago."

Led by Finnish phonemaker Nokia Oyj. (HEX:NOK1V) -- once the world's largest smartphone maker and currently the company behind roughly four out of every five Windows Phones shipped -- Windows Phone shipped 7.0m units in Q1 2013 for a 3.2 percent market share; slightly ahead of BlackBerry Ltd.'s (TSE:BB) 6.3m units shipped (and 2.9 percent market share). Google Inc.'s (GOOG) Android widened its lead for the quarter, outselling Apple, Inc. (AAPL) more than 4-to-1, with a 79 percent market share.

Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) Windows Phone product manager Larry Lieberman gave an interview to The Verge this week cheering the third place "victory". He comments, "We think we're solidly the third ecosystem right now. That's a huge announcement in some respects. [Windows Phone is] growing faster than anyone else right now."

The news must be bitter for BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins who has long stated that his ambition for his firm is to capture third place in the mobile market.

As for the Windows Phone product chief, he's dismissive of BlackBerry, commenting, "I don't think they can bring to the table some of the things we have. The fact like we're delivering across such a different set of price points to such a large audience."

After initially pledging to follow in Apple's line with Windows Phone, it now appears that Microsoft is aiming to emulate Google, whose OS is on three out of every four smartphones sold today. Microsoft and Nokia are hoping that sales of budget handsets will help to drive Windows Phone up a similar path of meteoric growth to Android.

Mr. Lieberman says that Microsoft continues its efforts to woo developers via a growing user base and easy to use APIs. He did not comment on the lack of a Windows Phone 8.1 preview at Microsoft's annual BUILD Conference, which wraps up tomorrow. He did hint at one possible feature, though, confirming that a notification center is the feature that is most often request in user feedback messages to Microsoft.

Ultimately Microsoft's decision not to tip its hand too early with WP8.1 may be a wise decision -- after all, early publication of Windows Phone 8 details depressed Windows Phone 7.5 sales last year. By contrast Apple and Google tend to announce new OS releases just befor they hit the market, to avoid a sales slowdown.

quote: First off Google makes it's money from ad revenue generated by people using it's services. Google doesn't make it's money from smartphones sales directly. Google doesn't lose profit if someone uses Gmail on a Windows Phone as apposed to Android.

Exactly, in other words they don't make money on Windows Phone if they don't use Gmail but instead use Outlook.com.

quote: After all, Apple's iOS is a far bigger competitor to Android than Windows Phone. Yet Google makes a ton of profit from iPhone's/iPad's using their services. It would be crazy to attempt to block competing platforms from using Google services. That makes no sense!

Yes they do but considering Apple is now switching over to Bing as their default search engine....You can see the issue that crops up, Apple starts using Bing Search and Bing Maps until they get their search engine and maps; then you have Windows Phone market share only increasing and with no access to Google apps. Google starts to lose revenue from Apple and no real way to generate any real revenue on the growing Windows Phone.

quote: More wild speculation. Microsoft doesn't have a god-given right to Google's API's. What judge, exactly, do you know who would say otherwise?

He is not saying that Microsoft has a god-given right to the API's or that a judge would force Google to hand them over. What he is saying is that if Google was to take Microsoft to court over the fact that they were not including Google ads they would lose and thus would set the precedent that you don't need to use Google API's to access Google products. Why is this a problem? Because it means that Microsoft doesn't have to use Google's API's to access Google products thus Google doesn't have anyway of generating revenue to pay for the usage from Windows Phone. It also means that Apple could then develop their own API's to access Google products and not have to display ads or in the worse case with Apple they could display their own ads and reap all the revenue.

"So, I think the same thing of the music industry. They can't say that they're losing money, you know what I'm saying. They just probably don't have the same surplus that they had." -- Wu-Tang Clan founder RZA